Playing the Reluctant Host
by paxbanana
Summary: Side-story to Measure Each Step. Toph decides she's finally going to get her field trip with one of the Fire Nation royal siblings. Azula is ever reluctant. Established Azula/Katara.


Warnings: Toph has a potty mouth.  
Pairing: Azula/Katara  
AN: I had to because there's not enough Toph in Measure Each Step—she's admittedly my favorite character in the series. Her parts just didn't fit in. This takes place between Book 1 and 2.

* * *

Azula didn't know what it was about her estate on Ember Island that made the Avatar's friends think it was the perfect place to go for a little soul searching. That was her first thought when she stepped into her courtyard after suffering a play with Ursa and saw the blind earthbender girl sitting there as if she owned the place.

In that hopeless moment, Azula realized that she had even less of a choice about hosting Toph Bei Fong than she had when Katara had shown up at her door. She'd not considered that her relationship with Katara meant she had to make nice with her friends. What an absolute bother.

Azula sighed and turned to her mother to make introductions. "Mom, this is—"

Toph lifted one dirty foot and brought it back down on the ground. Azula was abruptly buried to her neck in rock, her eyes level with her mother's ankles. "—Toph Bei Fong," she continued on the same breath. "I would appreciate it if you would fix my courtyard when you've finished whatever it is you're doing, earthbender," she snapped.

"What's going on?!" Ursa gasped.

"Hi," Toph replied brightly; she raised a dirty hand to wave. "A little insurance for me so your crazy daughter doesn't try to murder me again."

"If I tried to murder you, you'd be dead," Azula replied calmly.

"As if. So, I hear you've been fucking my friend."

Ursa stiffened so sharply Azula was surprised she didn't break something. Azula replied, "If you're worried about Katara's virtue, you're half a year too late. I assure you I don't take all weary Avatar wanderers that decide to visit Ember Island into my bed."

"Yeah, yeah, Fire Lord Harem."

That was actually humorous. "Harem? If I've ever had one of those, I certainly failed to notice. Though I suppose I do exude a certain charm."

Toph wrapped her hands around her own throat and gagged dramatically.

Azula's servants were now in the courtyard watching the embarrassing scene in alarm. Her usual hand twitch of dismissal wouldn't work since she was completely encased in rock. "Stop gawking," she commanded her majordomo. "I'm sure you all have something else you can be doing right now."

The servants quickly vacated the courtyard. Ursa hesitated before she moved to sit down on the ground. Toph slapped a hand against the ground and a hunk of the courtyard lurched up to meet Ursa. She screamed in shock as she sat on the fashioned seat.

Azula's voice was colored with her quiet laughter. "My, my. What kind of backwoods manners did they drill into your soul, earthbender? I must say, you are looking alarmingly cleaner than the last time I saw you. Did someone dunk you in a livery stable trough before you came here?"

"Azula," Ursa snapped. "You should at least be polite to the person who has you so completely dominated. And I would like to request, Young Lady Toph, please do _not_ harm my daughter."

"Finally, someone who's polite. Listen to your mother, Firebitch. If you were nicer to me, maybe you'd already be out of that hole."

"Why don't you come a little closer so I can whisper sweet nothings in your ear?"

"Yeah fucking right, Fire Breath. How about you kiss my sorry ass and I'll fart fire back at you."

"How amusing," Azula replied. "Come up with another one. I'm dying of laughter over here."

"I'm not letting you out, Firebitch. You can fucking forget it."

"We're in for a lovely evening then, aren't we? I suppose we could have a picnic in the courtyard, and you could tip food into my gullet. When it rains, use me as a precipitation monitor." Azula sighed, blew a lock of hair from her eyes, and began to whistle off-key.

"I can squeeze you a little tighter to shut you up, you know," Toph said.

Ursa sighed deeply; her alarm had shifted to resignation. "Lady Bei Fong, if you're waiting for my daughter to be polite, it's not going to happen. I for one would love to enjoy the supper waiting for us inside."

"Your hear that? Your own mother thinks you're rude."

"Was that supposed to hurt my feelings? I _am_ rude."

Toph stood up and skirted around Azula's head. Toph dropped into half-lotus behind Azula and proceeded to drum against the back of Azula's skull. Azula controlled her temper in a valiant effort. Her next words came from between her clenched teeth. "Tell me, earthbender, is it true you can metalbend as well?"

"Where'd you learn about that?" Toph sounded slightly less miffed. She stopped drumming, and Azula's blood pressure decreased significantly…at least until Tonkara wandered into the courtyard and collapsed into a purring furry bundle against her face. Ursa deigned to pick up the bearded cat to rescue Azula from that indignity.

She blew cat hair from her mouth and explained, "I had a fun little stint in the basement of the royal palace before I was transported to my prison cell in the desert. It's amazing what guards will say with a catatonic guest in the room."

Ursa's lips pinched in displeasure. Azula wished her mother would just get over it already. She didn't know what they all had expected the royal guards to do after a full coup.

"I'm hearing a lot of euphemisms in that statement," Toph said lightly.

"Anyway," Azula continued. "It was confirmation of what I'd seen during the eclipse. I heard talk of a small blind girl that attacked the assault forces. They said you could command metal into a suit of armor and seemed particularly terrified that you could scuttle across the ceiling. Funny that grown men are so terrified of things that even vaguely resemble spiders."

"Let's see how well you do if I dropped a kartantula in front of your face." Toph snickered. "That was fun as hell though. I totally rock at bending."

"How does one metalbend? I was unaware it was possible."

"It's just purified earth. I sense it the same way I use earth to sense the world."

"How helpful of you to provide an explanation I can understand," Azula sarcastically quipped.

"I see by vibrations in the earth," Toph said. "So, in a fucktastic situation, I saw vibrations in metal. It's a lot more unwieldy than earth, but I think that's just my lack of practice showing. Tell me, Psychobitch, how is it that you bend lightning?"

Ursa's expression went sour.

"I manipulate the charges in my body to create two poles. Then, as with fire, I release the energy I built up from charging those poles in the form of lightning, thus returning my body to its natural state. Many firebenders can do it if they try, but only few can actually direct the lightning anywhere but the ground." She'd used present tense out of pure habit…or maybe out of pure wish.

"What happens if it goes to the ground instead?"

"Your feet take the charge, and you potentially die from a heart attack. It's incredibly painful."

Ursa went white when she heard that; she clutched her robe in a white-knuckled grip. "No," she said as she realized what Azula meant. "No, Azula, no."

Azula rolled her eyes. "I had to make the mistake to learn never to make it again."

Ursa looked at her so sharply Azula flinched.

"Wowzer." Toph whistled sharply. "Someone got the stinkeye." Then, abruptly, Azula was out of the ground, standing back on the unbroken ground of her courtyard. She swayed before she caught her balance.

"Let's get some grub!" Toph chanted happily. She folded her arms behind her neck and walked into the house without a care. Azula sent her the stinkeye herself as she brushed her clothing off and followed the earthbender into her home. Her curiosity was greater than her embarrassment so she asked, "How did you know that, given you're oh so blind?"

"I guess an 'I saw it' joke isn't going to work with you, huh?"

"I get the feeling your Avatar friends aren't particularly bright."

"You totally just called your girlfriend dumb. I'm telling on you!" Toph continued conspiratorially, "She is pretty dumb though. It makes things interesting at least. Anyway, I can measure pulse, breathing, and stuff like that through the earth. I'm pretty good at gauging lies from truth too, purple platypus bear. You were definitely scared shitless by whatever the hell look your mother gave you."

"You're a startlingly precocious little thing, aren't you?"

"Come a little closer and say that again," Toph threatened, sugary sweet. Then she walked into a wall and rebounded with a snarl. "Fucking wooden house!"

Azula didn't hide her laugh, but she did catch Toph's arm and steered her out onto the veranda where their supper awaited them. Ursa sat wearily. "Wine," Ursa requested, her face in her hand. "Lots of wine."

Azula wasn't sure why her mother was so agitated. Toph was a lovely, polite young woman. A true lady. Toph punctuated Azula's sarcastic thought with a massive belch.

* * *

Toph had grown since the war. She was, to Azula's chagrin, taller than Azula now. For the height she'd gained, she'd not put on weight; she was all lanky gawkiness. Given that she was such a proficient earthbender, undoubtedly her frame would fill out with hard muscle and strong sinew. She would be a formidable woman.

For now, she was an awkward looking teenage girl who was all knobby elbows and knees.

Azula watched her wander around on the beach the next day, scaring seagulls and punting crabs into the surf. After she'd completely destroyed the beach, she flopped down in front of Azula in the sand.

"So, seriously," she said. "How did you get Katara to be your girlfriend?"

"Don't tell me your morbid curiosity is the reason why you're here."

"Hey, I'm not missing out on this firebender fieldtrip vacation thing again. Everybody got a great ole fieldtrip with Zuko and I was stuck with nothing. Congratulations, you're his substitute."

Azula wasn't sure what she was supposed to think about that. She settled with uneasy disgust.

"Oh, relax," Toph said carelessly. "I didn't mean I want to fuck you or anything. I'm kind of scared you have teeth down there or something."

"You have a foul mind for a ten year old."

Finally, Azula managed to coax satisfying offense. "I'm _fourteen_!" Toph blew air from her mouth rudely. "Old enough for my parents to start talking about arranged marriages."

That at least was something Azula had never had to fear. If Ozai hadn't taken the throne…well, that was another matter. She was certain that she would have joined the military out of self-defense. Many noble daughters were matched early in life and married the day of their sixteenth birthday to form an alliance with another family. It was a disgustingly sexist custom that should have been abolished many centuries ago after the age of gender equality.

Perhaps this was the motivation for the surprise visit. "You would be better off appealing to Fire Lord Zuzu if you want to protest a marriage arrangement. Moping on my beach isn't going to solve the issue."

Toph shrugged. "I don't care about legal mumbo-jumbo. All I have to do is run away. What I'm trying to figure out is what the hell to do with my parents. Every time I come back from running away, it's all, 'Oh, Toph, we're so sorry; we'll never ask anything from you again!' Two months later, 'Toph you're not serious enough about your future!'" She shook herself. "Seriously though, how in the world did you and Katara hook up?"

Azula accepted the change of subject for what it was. Her answer could have been snide or vulgar. Instead, she told the truth. "I can't begin to guess how Katara's mind works."

Toph chewed on her lip for a moment in consideration, then she offered a big grin and a reprieve. "You mean you didn't use your seductive skills?"

"I didn't take that class in the Royal Academy; my seductive skills must be innate."

Toph laughed and flopped to her back. "Man, Aang was _so_ pissed!" She sounded gleeful about that. "If he wasn't a pacifist, I'd tell you to watch yourself."

Azula's words were bitter. "Who needs to kill when you can reach into a person's soul and rape their bending away?"

Toph grunted. "You have a point." She was silent for a beat and rolled on one elbow to face Azula. "Look, I'm telling you this as a bender to another bender. Energybending is fucking hard. If Aang makes one mistake while he does it, he loses his bending…or something funky like that."

"Why would he take that risk then?"

"Honestly, I don't think it's worth it for him to do it at all. Might as well just kill your enemies. No muss, no fuss. But Aang is worried about the state of his mortal soul or something." Toph rolled her wrist in dismissal.

The selfishness of that pacifistic wish was beyond comprehension. The Avatar had taken a man's bending so he wouldn't have to end his life…a man who could have commanded his loyal nobles to rebel and reclaim the throne from Zuko and start a bloody civil war. It was lucky for all of them that Ozai had been as useless after the end of the war as she had been. If Ozai started a rebellion now, his own son would be forced to kill him.

And it was all for the Avatar to sleep better at night.

"Look, I'm telling you you probably don't have to worry about Aang."

Azula was obligated to say, "I appreciate your information."

Her honesty caused an unexpected response. "Appreciate this!" Toph farted.

Azula gathered herself to hold back her teeth-clenching irritation. What she didn't expect was her own amusement. She burst into laughter. "You are a disgusting hoodlum."

"Yep, and I'm proud of it!" Toph blew a raspberry. "I'm totally gonna rub off on you just so I can annoy Katara even when I'm not here."

"Do not rub anything on me," Azula warned. "Or I will break it off and feed it to you."

Toph positively cackled.

* * *

Toph was a much different houseguest than Katara had been. She didn't avoid Azula, and she didn't go out of her way to interact with her either. Toph came and went as she pleased, and she slept out on the beach as often as she slept in the bed Azula's servants kept prepared for her—and she tracked sand all through the house, much to the horror of Azula's majordomo. The times they interacted seemed to be more about Toph warding off boredom than anything else.

She was rude, awkwardly honest, and didn't seem to have any standards of personal hygiene.

Azula liked her.

Several weeks had passed since Toph had taken partial residence in her home when Azula walked down to the beach only to see the earthbender sitting in the wet sand wringing out a bloody cloth. Toph's expression was tight with unhappiness.

A moment passed before Azula realized what might have happened with growing horror. Why _now_ with her of all people? She didn't know how to deal with this sort of thing. Where was Katara or Ursa when she needed them?

No doubt Toph had sensed her approach. There was no use trying to walk away, and part of her felt unwilling sympathy for the uncomfortable shock of it. "Your first cycle?"

"Anyone ever tell you that you like to point out the obvious?" Toph asked, uncharacteristically morose. "I woke up with my belly twisted in knots this morning and sticky blood between my legs. Surprise! The universe reminds me it hates me again!"

"Congratulations," Azula said dryly. She sat down in the sand next to Toph and remembered when she'd started years ago. "It doesn't get better."

"Great." Toph flicked a toe and sent a cascade of sand shooting towards the ocean. "I came out broken one way; I hoped I could be broken another way too. Is that too much to ask?"

"It doesn't get better, but it _does_ get easier," Azula amended. "I'm sure Katara would have something better to say." She rolled her eyes and spoke with heavy scorn. "Something about how her bending and body wax and wane with the moon, sisterhood, and the closeness between women and nature. Blah blah blah."

"Huh?"

"Exactly. Just imagine her saying something about the strength and power of a woman and relating that to your bleeding."

"I'm already comforted." Toph was sarcastic, but Azula's words had earned a faint smile. "I just keep thinking about how soon it'll be when my parents decide to marry me off. I have to sit for these stupid lessons about how to host parties and eat at a table and keep a womanly household or whatever. I don't even want to marry; I figured if I couldn't have kids nobody would want me."

"No?" Azula asked. Why Toph Bei Fong had decided to use her home as a place for soul searching about this issue, she still couldn't fathom. What sort of lies had Katara been telling her friends?

"No." A rude noise accompanied the adamant refusal. "I'm not sure I even _like_ boys. Maybe I want a girlfriend too."

Azula took that statement with a grain of salt and made no comment. Toph had proven she was contrary by her nature. "Perhaps you could compromise with your parents."

"Compromise?"

Clearly Azula would have to hold her figurative hand through this conversation. "Why do they want you to be contracted to marry so young?"

"I don't know. I guess they want to make sure the family names lives on or something."

"Then show them you can carry the family name on. Obviously I can't speak for your parents, but in my experience nobles are exceedingly simple. They want money and a legacy. Show your parents you can and will take over the estate in the future; show them _you_ want to do it, not your spouse."

"Ugh, that means tutoring and classes."

"So agree to lessons on managing the estate. Women are just as legitimate heirs as men. If you're educated, you have far more say about your suitor because his or her identity won't impact the financial future of the family. You'll know how to manage it alone. And if your parents disagree, you'll be educated enough to pursue interests elsewhere."

The idea wrinkled Toph's brow and finally pushed a sigh from her lips. She set her head against her knees and turned her hooded eyes in Azula's direction. "When did you start your cycle?"

Azula was so nonplussed by the change in conversation that she answered honestly. "I was twelve, and servants discreetly left different undergarments for me to wear."

Toph was always translucent with her facial expressions. Her milky eyes widened in shock. "That was it? No one talked to you about it?"

"Who would dare?" Azula asked in a weak joke.

Toph giggled, then sighed. "That sucked, didn't it?"

"I assure you, I had more important things to worry about." She'd graduated from the academy to undertake private tutoring at the palace, train daily with Ozai, and sit in on trade and war meetings. Thinking of that time in her life made her both nostalgic and morose. It had been so easy but so desperately unhappy. "I didn't have time to worry about it. Before I knew it, I'd stopped bleeding and then started again the next month."

"Did you miss your mother?"

The question brought out the sting about the entire thing, an insult she hadn't realized she'd felt at all until Toph's question. Though her childhood, she'd carried around unconscious bitterness about all the ways that Ursa might have made her life a little easier. Azula took a breath and examined these bitter emotions for the first time. She gathered the negative emotion in her breath and released it, pushing it out with her exhalation.

"Nothing can be done to change the past. Things were as they were." How disgustingly Iroh-ish of her.

They were quiet for a while. Toph did finger-dances on the sand, coaxing shapes and figures that the rising tide swept away every few moments. Finally she groaned in frustration once again. "So maybe that was good advice about education and crap. But how can I do all that when lessons are my biggest problem?"

"Explain."

She rapped a knuckle on her scalp. "It's impossible to keep all that information in my head, and my tutors think I'm stupid when I ask them to repeat something. There's no way for me to remember everything the first go-around. And math is so friggin' impossible. I can't keep the numbers straight."

"You need notes."

"Yeah, brilliant, Bitchbender. Let me take notes and read them with these sightless eyes!" She waved a hand in front of her face.

Azula rolled her eyes. "You're so proud of your blindness and yet you use it as an excuse."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean! I'm blind. I can't see fucking ink on a fucking scroll!"

"Your vocabulary is limited, isn't it?" Toph flicked her off. Azula sighed. "It cannot be beyond your ability to simply devise a way in which you can learn to read and write."

"Another brilliant idea. I guess I could punch holes in a piece of parchment and feel my way across the paper."

How amusing that the girl was so dismissive of a good idea. Azula generously pointed that out. "That's not a bad idea."

Toph scowled at the ground in evident frustration. "There aren't enough friggin' dots in the universe to match the number of friggin' words I hear every day."

"It's true the main writing system uses morpheme symbols, but you don't have to use that one. The noblewomen of the Fire Nation write notes and poetry in a phonological script."

"Explain that to me in a way I'll understand."

Well, at least she had Toph's full attention. "Our sound system consists of a finite number of phonemes."

Toph's expression was blank in incomprehension.

"Phonemes are sounds that have a linguistic meaning. If you take a consonant-vowel pair and translate that into a written symbol, you're left with about forty phonemes and corresponding written characters. If you combine those sounds, say for my name: A-zu-la, you can spell out the word with three characters." Azula demonstrated by writing each phoneme in the sand as she spoke them. "Likewise, Zu-ko." She wrote his name. "The 'zu' that's the middle syllable in my name is the same as the one that starts my brother's name."

Toph pressed her palm to the sand. She frowned in concentration as she sensed Azula's writing in the sand. "So… I could make three different patterns that I can touch and it would mean the sounds of your name?"

"Yes. You can further reduce the number of discrete phoneme symbols by pairing voiced and voiceless consonants." Azula wrote out the characters for 'zu' and 'su' next to each other.

"I don't know what that means," Toph admitted. Slowly, Toph's finger ghosted over the characters Azula had written, then she copied them. "A-zu-la," Toph said quietly. She continued. "Zu-ko… Wow. Fucking wow."

"If you insist on it, I might show you the phonetic writing system to help you devise a touch-based script."

"Fucking hell," Toph said again.

"You're so eloquent."

"Fuck," Toph said again. To Azula's horror, she began to cry. "I can do it," she said with a wet laugh. "I can fucking do it!" Toph flopped onto her back and shouted out a loud yelp of pleasure. "Fuck, yeah!"

She took a few minutes to gather herself. When she sat back up, she wiped her cheeks dry. "Azula."

It was the first time Toph had used her name. She answered Toph with the same soberness that Toph had addressed her. "Yes, Toph?"

"May I feel your face?"

Azula heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Oh, I suppose I can survive your grubby hands on me."

Toph's fingers ghosted over her forehead, over her brow and eyes, across her cheekbones and nose, and rubbed gently at her lips and chin. They pressed back to cup Azula's ears and then slipped into her hair and down her neck. Azula sat and fought the instinct to flinch from each touch.

"Oh," Toph said lightly, her eyes wide. "You're not hideous."

"Why, thank you. Your charm is utterly astounding."

Toph understood the dryness of her voice and sniggered. "Don't get your panties in a twist." She brought her fingertips to Azula's lips. "Smile so I know you really can."

Surprisingly, it wasn't that hard.

* * *

"What in the world are you doing?"

Azula set the blunted metal nail against a dotted paper covering the thin metal sheet on her desk. She lifted her hammer and swung it down, breaking the paper and denting the metal sheet. "I'm writing a letter."

Katara rounded the desk and looked as confused as Azula expected her to be.

It was a complicated thing to write to Toph Bei Fong. Azula had to write out the dotted script on thin paper, flip it upside down, and hammer out each dot so that the script rounded outward for Toph's fingertips. Toph had said she could use metalbending to sense each bump, but if this script was to be appropriate for blind non-benders, Azula refused to be lazy about their first clumsy attempts to correspond.

Azula glanced over her shoulder at Katara. She was happy to accept a kiss. She reached for the thin metal sheet leaning against the side of her desk. "I'm replying to a letter from your blind friend."

"A letter?" Katara took the sheet in her hands and stared at it. She touched the raised bumps carefully.

"For being from such an affluent family, she's an atrocious speller."

Katara balanced the metal letter in one arm and brushed her fingers down one row. "You can read this?"

Azula reached into one of her desk drawers and unrolled the key she and Toph had devised. "Not quite yet. I'm learning, but I'm working at a disadvantage because Toph apparently can't discern the difference between voiced and voiceless consonants."

"What does it say?"

Azula would have handed Katara her written translation, but Katara hadn't learned the noblewoman phonetic script yet. It was more fun to say it anyway. "Toph was engaged."

"Engaged? _Toph_?"

"…for two hours. Apparently her betrothed didn't appreciate her flatulent talents."

Katara giggled. She watched Azula pound a few more dots and dashes into the waiting metal sheet. Her expression took on that odd tenderness that made Azula's stomach flip. "You did this for Toph?"

"You can be assured I did nothing _for_ her. She did most of the work," Azula sniped back gently, finishing her sentence with a literal bang. "I learned she's such a delightful character during her visit last season. I'd hate to go without hearing her rude little jokes for any length of time."

Katara leaned against Azula's shoulder and shook her head with a sigh. "You better watch out. All my friends are going to start thinking you're nice."

"I shudder at the thought," Azula muttered, wrapping an arm around her waist. "I don't want any more soul searching strays showing up at my door."

"Only me?"

"Only you."

-end-


End file.
